Vacaville pastor Mark Lewis is once again behind bars, after Solano County authorities executed a search warrant at his Farrell Road home Friday afternoon to determine whether he used church funds to post bail two weeks ago.

Lewis, 39, was arrested on suspicion of fraud after the District Attorney’s Office began investigating the source of funds he used to post $500,000 bail following his Jan. 10 arrest in connection to the firebombing of an ex-girlfriend’s home, said Lt. John Carli with the Vacaville Police Department.

About 2 p.m. Friday, investigators with the DA’s Office executed the search warrant with assistance from the Vacaville Police Department’s Crime Suppression Team and the Sheriff’s Office, which has jurisdiction of the rural residence in the 3300 block of Farrell Road. They were expected to remain there well into the evening.

“Information came into the hands of the District Attorney’s Office, because of the bail and the high amount and how the process works, that they began an independent investigation for his bail,” Carli explained.

“Through this whole process, their investigation has uncovered evidence of fraud … as it pertains to loans that may be related to the church,” Carli stated. “So this search warrant is looking into his bail and any other evidence that would tie the church to his bail.”

Carli said he could not speak to the details of what Lewis had disclosed concerning the source of his bail money. When posting high amounts of bail, suspects are required to state where the money comes from.

According to Carli, the state requires the presence of an “independent special master,” or attorney, during these types of investigations “so that (authorities) don’t cross the lines of privileged information from congregation members.” That extra step, however, delays what would usually be a search warrant for records, he said.

In the meantime, Lewis finds himself in county jail for the second time in as many weeks.

“He’ll go to jail on additional charges of fraud and new evidence of fraud, based on the financial status of the church, and also for the bail,” Carli said.

Lewis’s uncle, Danny Ray Lewis, 60, who also lives on the property, was also arrested Friday on a number of gun charges after investigators found a weapon with the serial numbers filed off inside the residence, Carli said.

He was booked into Solano County Jail on suspicion of being a felon in possession of a firearm and possessing a firearm with the serial numbers filed off.

Lewis was one of four people arrested in connection with the Jan. 9 attack in the 700 block of Chateau Circle. Three Sacramento-area transients arrested near the scene told police they had been staying at his church. Investigators searched the property and linked evidence to Lewis, who has continued to maintain his innocence, insisting to various media outlets that he had nothing to do with the firebombing.

The church’s phone number has been disconnected and attempts to contact Lewis at his spacious home next to the church before his arrest on Friday were unsuccessful.

Though the initial attack is over, the passage of time has done little to allay the fears of the Vacaville woman who police say was the intended target of the Molotov cocktail thrown into the home where she and her children live.

Sarah Nottingham, Lewis’ ex-girlfriend, and her three children were asleep inside the two-story home when a firebomb came crashing through an upstairs window around 3:30 a.m.

In a recent email interview, Nottingham said she met Lewis in early 2003 while engaged to her now ex-husband. The couple had been looking for a new church and a pastor to marry them when they stumbled upon Lewis’s church.

“We were warmly welcomed at Fellowship Baptist Church and liked Mark’s style of preaching,” she recalled. “He seemed to have extreme dedication for the Lord.”

Lewis eventually married the couple and later dedicated their son and baptized the rest of their family.

Nottingham said she and her husband were “highly active” in the church as Sunday school teachers and attended conferences outside the church, as well.

“Mark counseled us for the duration of our marriage and I would meet one-on-one with his wife, Joanna, in addition to that,” she said.

Following Nottingham’s divorce a few years later, she left the church so her ex-husband and son could continue attending, she said.

Nottingham said she was in contact with Lewis only a few times through the years, usually regarding things related to her son’s attendance at church.

After hearing about the “tragic” and “unexpected death” of Joanna Lewis in October 2011, Nottingham said she and the pastor reconnected.

“I started to meet with him again for my own counseling and he had told me I was ‘a breath of fresh air,’ ” she remembered, adding, “I was helping him, too.”

They eventually became “best friends,” she said and, in October 2012, they became a couple.

“He portrays himself as a devout Christian leader, a man of God and has a great sense of humor,” she said.

“We often talked about the future and even getting married in Michigan, where he was born. Mark was very loving and thoughtful at times but wanted to keep our relationship a secret,” Nottingham recalled. “I was told to be patient with that and I was, because I loved him.”

Lewis occasionally displayed a quick temper, “but nothing out of the ordinary,” she said.

“Things I did notice after about six months I made excuses for,” she said, chalking it up to Lewis’s grieving after having lost his wife of 13 years.

Lewis seemed to get “more and more controlling,” she said, but at the same time, he kept a distance between their relationship and his role at the church. They would go out to eat or shop out of town to avoid running into anyone he knew.

“We vacationed for a week to Michigan in the summer and went to a few A’s games that allowed us more freedom, so to speak,” she said. “I grew impatient with waiting for him to let people know about our relationship and he seemed distant. He would lie to church members when asked if we had something between us.”

Nottingham said she later learned that Lewis told people that she was suicidal and that he “had to keep me around.”

They began to drift apart as she started to feel that she “didn’t know him anymore.”

“When I wanted to end our relationship … he made it clear he wasn’t ready to do so,” she wrote.

In December, she sought a restraining order against him. It was granted, for three years, this week.

Although Nottingham said she and her family are holding up, she acknowledged that “it’s hard to sleep at night without nightmares or replaying that night over” in her head.

“We are still living in fear,” she said, adding that she and her children will be starting therapy soon.

“I’ve lost my job, my car (is) destroyed, and I’m trying to keep my faith in God stronger than before. It really messed with my head that I didn’t truly know the person I thought I cared for,” she said.

“It’s scary to think you know someone so well and learn they were never the person you thought you knew,” Nottingham said.

Lewis is slated to make his first court appearance in connection with the firebombing on Jan. 31.

“I can’t thank the Vacaville police enough for all they have done and continue to do for my family,” Nottingham said. “All of those in the community who support us are keeping us strong.”

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